Much ado about weather
by bhut
Summary: Inspired by primevalarchive's "weather" challenge, Nick, Lester and others have to work together to stop London from flooding via a time anomaly as Nick's mother prepares to come there to visit Nick.
1. Chapter 1

**Prologue**

The time anomaly opened quietly, with a nary a hum or any other sound. Only its chromatically white light illuminated the dark, watery depths of the place, in which it opened, only several round, animal eyes were able to observe it... and then it became too late to flee, as several shapes, standing dark and indistinctive against the time anomaly's background, slipped in through it...

Nick Cutter and Claudia Brown were a pair of very happy people. They were also a pair of very satisfied people for the obvious reasons, and currently they were profoundly relaxing, enjoying a bottle of wine between the two of them. It was a very nice, romantic evening, complete with a soft pitter-patter of rain on the roof... actually, it was raining for quite a while, for several weeks now, but it was England, cold, damp, foggy and rainy weather were the norm here, so Nick and Claudia didn't mind.

The relatively quiet, but prominent sound of a key, turning in the lock, was another matter entirely. "Helen," Nick muttered through clenched teeth. "She dares?"

Abruptly, Nick got up – over some protests of Claudia – and opened the door. Sure enough, Helen was here, with her keys – Nick had never had time to change the locks on their doors – in one hand, and a fat folder under the other arm. There was also another, much bigger person, standing half-obscured in the evening's gloom behind her, so Nick decided to tone his aggression somewhat, and settled to merely ask crossly:

"What do you want?"

"To give you your birthday gift early – it's the evening of the 25th, remember?" Helen lightly replied, seemingly unshaken by Nick's less than friendly greeting.

Nick froze. "Today was twenty-fifth? But my birthday is... tomorrow," he turned around and raced deep inside their house.

Claudia turned and faced Helen with a half-bemused and half-confused look. "What's that all about?" she asked, as the other woman sat down on an armchair, looking rather smug. "I mean, Nick never mentioned that it's going to be his birthday-"

"That's because Nick hates them – his mother, the original Mrs. Cutter – is coming to visit him... I mean the two of you."

Claudia blinked. The fact that Nick had family other than Helen wasn't all that surprising, the fact that he never mentioned them before... kind of was. Plus, the idea of meeting her potential mother-in-law for the first time... was rather daunting. "So," Claudia asked carefully, "what's so bad about her?"

"What you really need to now, is that she and Nick got nothing in common – Nick takes after his father instead," Helen shook her head, looking quite serious for once. "Other than that... I think I will have to let Nick explain it to you instead. Oh and here's my gift for tomorrow – our divorce papers."

"Divorce papers?" Claudia blinked. "I thought that Nick was widowed, I mean-"

"Nick can be slow and reliable," Helen shrugged. "That has plenty of good sides, but it also means that he is slow to get started – especially if it something that he doesn't want to do in the first place. Anyways-" she grimaced and blinked, as Nick re-emerged from the bathroom, more confused and flustered than before.

"Excuse me," Nick turned to Claudia, "but as we pack up and go someplace else, we also need to call a plumber – the water in the sink is coming straight back up, the pipes must be clogged or something."

Before Claudia could answer, there was a knock on the door. Instinctively, Helen – as the one closest to it – opened it. Stephen and Connor rushed right in. "Nick," Connor gushed, "your birthday's tomorrow, your mother's coming!"

_To be continued..._


	2. Chapter 2

For several moments afterwards there was just silence as the old- and newcomers just stared at each. "So, how do you two know about Nick's mother?" Helen finally said in a relatively friendly, cordial tone of voice.

"Um, it was some time _after_ you left, I think," Connor said, not noticing Nick's painful wince. "She came to visit Nick – or professor Cutter – um, you know who I mean, I was there explaining my latest thesis to Stephen, who`s Nick's TA, she sort of had Nick take us with them to a restaurant-"

"To a restaurant?" you could see Helen's hackles rise at last phrase. "Nick, one of the... bones of contention, let us say, between us was your insistence that I cook for us on that day, 'cause your mother couldn't be taken into public-"

"And that was correct," Nick admitted. "After she left on that day, the three of us – I, Stephen and Connor – got drunk for the rest of spring break. That's how we met each other for the first time, back then."

Claudia made some sort of a noise. She wasn't sure what she was trying to say, but somehow or other she still decided to make some sort of a general noise that caused everyone to turn in her direction.

"Oh, hey Claudia, did you want to say something?" Connor spoke in a kindly tone of voice to the older woman. "We're listening."

Without having any ideas as to what she was going to say, Claudia opened her mouth all the same... and there was a clanging crash.

"What the-?" Stephen, being the closest one to the open door, turned around and saw... a flying cover from a sewer that was flying through the air towards him at a speed. Instinctively, Stephen jumped into the open doorway, seeing how the cover struck the Cutters' door and got partially stuck in there, quivering like a de-activated circular buzz saw.

The next moment, however, this memory got overridden by the next one: a thundering shot from a rifle (must've been an elephant gun) and a shower of a liquid that was definitely wasn't rain water, accompanied by a massive piece of a ridged tentacle, which fell almost upon Connor...

James Lester was not having a very good time. For the last several days it had been raining almost non-stop and he was busy filling-out paperwork and otherwise executing various necessary functions to start his Anomaly Research Center (ARC, if abbreviated). This, naturally, was not a particularly easy process, and all that James Lester wanted to do for the moment, was to have a good, long sleep. Instead, he currently had to stand under the rain, alongside Becker and others, interviewing Nick Cutter and his merry men, except for Abby Maitland, who somehow managed to miss out on all the excitement.

On the other hand, though, the presence of Helen Cutter fully compensated the absence of Abby Maitland and then some. "Ah, Mrs. Cutter," Lester grinned nastily. "So glad to see you... once more."

_Several weeks ago..._

_James Lester would never admit it, but he felt relief almost as big as one felt by Miss Lewis, when he saw Cutter and Becker emerge from the time anomaly. The presence of Cutter's wife was a less pleasant surprise, but the look on her face compensated that somewhat: the woman looked considerably less smug than before, almost shaken._

"_Becker, Cutter, good to see you two come back in one piece," Lester spoke, almost smiling. "And Mrs. Cutter, glad to see that you've decided to join us."_

"_Don't get your hopes too high, Lester," Helen Cutter doesn't sound too different from her old self – that woman's got a killer poker face. "I just returned here, because it's closer to my next destination point, which most definitely does _not _involve you."_

"_Oh really? What makes you think that we'll just let you go?"_

"_Partially from gratitude and partially from _this_."_

'_This' was a very sudden, very powerful kick in the knee, which caused a lot of pain for Lester, and enabled Helen to get away from Lester undeterred. "Captain," he managed to ground to Becker, "ahem."_

"_I seriously hope that you know what you're doing," Becker calls out instead. "Because maybe-"_

"_That's the thing – I really don't," Helen calls back even as she disappears into the Forest of Dean. "But I got to do it anyways. And by the way? Earlier, I did lie: the future does not belong to bats or rats – the future does belong to us, or rather our descendants..."_

Now...

"You are?" Helen nonchalantly asked. "Funny, I thought that that kick was very humiliating... or is it your inner politician speaking up?"

"Ha-ha," Lester said flatly. "Anyways, what has happened here?"

"Oh, we are gathered here to congratulate Nick on his upcoming divorce from Helen and also to remind him that his mother is coming tomorrow and that he should lay low for a while," Connor finally spoke, instead.

"And the tentacle?" Lester finally made it through the stream of Connor's chattering.

"Oh, it came in the end, through the sewer. We don't know what it is, 'cause while it looks like an octopus's tentacle, it doesn't have any suckers, only ridges-"

"You mean nobody here doesn't know?" Lester was a bit incredulous. So far, Cutter and his crew always had no problem identifying any of the animals that came their way, especially with his wife providing extra support.

"Why should we?" Cutter is not intimidated. "I study dinosaurs, Stephen and Connor - Pleistocene mammals, Helen was an anthropologist. This is most likely to be a mollusc, a cephalopod mollusc either from the ancient past or far-off future – and no one here specializes in them."

"And yet it came through the sewers," Lester mused, hoping that he succeeded in hiding that he felt rather unbalanced, for for Cutter to admit that he didn't know something this was a first. "Who shot it anyways, and whose car it is?"

"Mine," the speaker appeared from behind the vehicles, tall, powerfully muscles, prominently female and definitely foreign. She also carried something that was either an elephant gun or a massive club – or maybe it was both. "Please, call me Kuro."

"She's with me," Helen added helpfully.

"I see," Lester said with a grin, but Kuro (if that was her real name) interrupted him:

"Oh, get your mind out of the gutter, man!" she snapped. "She doesn't swing this way, and neither do I. I'd rather do him," she pointed at Connor, "than another woman."

There was a thoughtful pause, as Connor looked like he'd rather be anywhere else but here, and everybody else just sort of gave him a second look.

"So, do you have a license for this monster?" Becker finally decided to break the silence.

"Maybe," Kuro grinned again. "And who are you, anyways?"

Unfortunately, at that moment Lester decided to speak up once more. "Before we all get very jolly, here, maybe we should be focusing on something more important – like the question as to where did it come from?"

"It came from the sewers, obviously," Connor, apparently, felt particularly helpful at the moment.

"Yes, yes it has," Lester said, after counting to ten. "I guess that this means that the time anomaly from which it actually came from is located there, as well. Cutter, you're still the field team's leader, aren't you?"

Nick groaned. "This really isn't my idea of romance," he spoke turning to Claudia. "I was thinking rather of going somewhere, well, anywhere but the sewers, really."

"I know," Claudia said gently, "but it's one of those things that we'll have to do." She half-turned to Helen. "Are you in or out here, though?"

"I don't know, I don't see any reason, and this isn't really my idea," Helen said thoughtfully.

"Sure it is – as long as you have a reason, that is," Kuro said cheerfully. "Helen, come on, I'm calling you in on this."

"Well, fine," Helen shrugged, "since you're calling it, I'm in."

"You sure that you don't want to tell us something," Lester couldn't help but to comment.

"We're guessing that you won't be going down with us, little man," Kuro leaned slightly downwards, her teeth flashing in a death's-head grin at Lester.

"Of course not," Lester said unperturbedly, even though he suspected that he may be up for another kick in the leg. "I'll be up here, doing the controls."

"Claudia can do that," Nick said, smiling viciously.

"Hey, speaking of blondes, where's Abby?" Connor spoke up suddenly, half trying to defuse the situation, half in genuine concern.

His only reply, unfortunately, was silence.

_To be continued._


	3. Chapter 3

Frankly, the giant mollusc was lost. It had followed its smaller, more dexterous prey through the oddly glowing patch of the ocean, and suddenly found itself in a very different place, a place where spaces were far narrower, where water was far less salty than before, and where its prey had the advantage instead.

To make matters worse, the mollusc was reasonably intelligent, but it did have a somewhat poor memory, and so it simply couldn't find its way back, to that oddly glowing patch of water. The hunger in its gut and the pain from its wounded tentacle made it even more irritable and unstable, and so, something had to give...

Abruptly, the mollusc found itself in a more spacious area, where it had more room to manoeuvre, and where water bore smells of food, both strange and foreign.

The giant mollusc shifted its position, and prepared to strike.

"That's the last time I'll go out after sunset in such lousy weather," Abby Maitland muttered to herself. "And where the Hell Connor had gone off too, to?"

To say honestly, the short blonde was not having a very good time. Ever since the event with the giant futuristic killer bat-thing, her life was not improving. The time anomalies seemed to have reached a lull, which meant that they could've stopped altogether, which meant-

Feeling rather dejected, upset and lost, Abby stopped half-way down the staircase into the subway and tried to sort her thoughts and feelings in order. Sadly, she never had the time, for abruptly there was a great cry-out down there...and a crowd of people almost swept her off her feet and trampled into the ground.

"What the-?" Abby barely had time to say, as she leapt out of the subway's entrance and off to the side, only to see a massive, rubbery, ridged tentacle lash out of there, grasp some unlucky dog, and drag it, whining back underground.

Abby gulped, and hurriedly dialled Nick's number.

"I can't believe that you didn't bring Miss Maitland here," Lester said in his usual acerbic tone. "I mean, I thought that you were like the four musketeers with her."

"Actually, we never saw her until we met in the Forest of Dean," Connor admitted, guiltily. "If it wasn't for the time anomalies, we would never know that she existed – and vice versa."

Lester opened his mouth to say something else, when the answering machine from deep inside Nick's residence came on. "Cutter," the people could hear Abby babbling into it, "I am at the subway at the crossing of twenty-third and seventeenth. There's a giant monster with tentacles that eats people-" and it cut-off with the static.

"Becker, call your men," Nick said calmly. "Lester, we got to drive!"

_To be continued._


End file.
